This invention relates to sliders for recording heads used with storage disks.
In a typical magnetic or optical disk storage system, a read/write head is mounted on the rear end of a slider (i.e., at the rearward edge of the slider). The slider is supported by a positioning arm/suspension assembly and configured so that when the disk is rotated rapidly, the slider flies at a height above the disk. To achieve high storage densities, the slider must be flown close to the disk surface. One technique is to mechanically bias the positioning assembly to force the slider toward the disk. Another proposed approach is to contour the slider bottom so that it generates subambient (or negative) pressure to draw the bottom of the slider down near the disk.
One known approach for contouring the slider bottom is to provide the slider with a pair of side rails that extend along the length of the slider and define a cavity between them which generates the negative pressure. The rails typically extend to the rearward or trailing edge of the slider, and the rearward end of each rail generally supports one read/write head or other transducer.
In flight, sliders are subject to roll, which is the banking of the slider relative to a horizontal axis of the positioning arm. Sliders are also subject to yaw, where the trailing edge of a slider is either closer to (positive yaw) or farther from (negative yaw) the disk center than is the slider leading edge. The yaw angle is measured as the angle between the longitudinal axis of the slider and the tangent to the disk track.